Life Through the Eyes of an Ambulance Driver

Now that opening weekend of the new Star Wars movie is over, I’m assuming most of the hardcore fans have seen it. SPOILER ALERT, don’t read this if you don’t want to know what happens in the movie.

First off, I went to the midnight showing on Thursday night / Friday morning. I was surprised to see that they were showing it before midnight seeing as how Friday the 18th of December was the release date. I’m sure it has something to do with getting more ticket sales for breaking record opening weekend sales.

As for the movie, I had high expectations. The prequels, episodes I, II, III were not very good. Especially II, I almost fell asleep during that one. The originals, IV, V, VI were the best movies. My favorite was episode V, The Empire Strikes Back. My biggest desire was hoping that the movie was better than the prequels. I got that much out of it.

To use one word to describe what I thought about the new movie, weak. It was entertaining and I’m glad I got to see it, but compared to the original trilogy, there isn’t much for me to get excited about.

Oh Jason, you are just being a naysayer. No, I’m being realistic and not all jacked up on Disney hype. Full disclosure, I own shares of Disney stock.

Why was it weak? Well, as is the case with most of the “entertainment” that Hollywood dumps at the theaters, there is nothing original. Everything is a remake or a continuation of something that was once good. The same can be said about The Force Awakens.

Do you remember how the original Star Wars movie started out? The evil Empire is attacking a Rebel ship and Strom Troopers are boarding the ship to retrieve information the Rebellion has. Princess Leia gives R2-D2 secret battle plans (building plans for the Death Star), and tells him to keep them safe. R2-D2 and C3PO then get off the ship and begin the adventure of staying away from the Empire while delivering the plans.

Source: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/R2-D2

So guess what happens in the first fifteen minutes of The Force Awakens. Storm Troopers attack a village where a rebel leader, Poe, is getting a map of the location of Luke Skywalker. The rebel leader realizing he is trapped, gives the map to his droid unit, BB8. Poe then tells him to get away where BB8 begins his adventure of trying to get the map to the place that it needs to get. Sound familiar? I think it sounds a little too familiar.

When we first see the Millennium Falcon, our new young hero, Finn, makes his way to the lower gun chair where he has to learn how to shoot down Tie fighters using an unfamiliar weapons system. Hasn’t this happened before?

The Millennium Falcon is then captured inside of another large ship where the new heroes hide themselves in a familiar smuggling compartment while waiting for their captors to board their ship. Hasn’t this happened before?

The Order (the bad guys who may as well be the Empire) continues to pursue our heroes who escape in the Millennium Falcon while trying to get the map of Skywalker’s location to the Rebel leaders.

The new villain in the movie, Kylo Ren, is a guy wearing all black, a cape, and a mask that distorts his voice. Please, really? The worst part is that the voice distortion sounds so bad that it sounds like some cheap Darth Vader toy you buy at Wal-mart that your kids talk through to sound like Darth Vader but not really. This guy too has a bad temper and carries a red light saber.

The Order has built a, wait for it, another planet like weapon for blowing up other planets. Except this time its different because it is built into a planet instead of being a completely separate space station. This of course makes it much larger. So guess what the Rebellion has to do now? I don’t know, maybe find a way to blow it up. This hasn’t happened before, has it?

To blow up the new weapon, they have to disable something on the planet so that the Rebel ships can destroy the weapon. To do this Han Solo must lead a small team to covertly get on the planet to sneak their way to this place they must disable. Hmmm….. I seem to remember in The Return of the Jedi, that Han had to lead a….. no, that’s just my imagination.

A Storm trooper Captain gets captured by Chewbacca and Han Solo. Chewy wants to know where to put the captain and guess where Solo wants Chewy to put her. A garbage compactor. While admittedly that was funny during the movie, it was a bit weak.

In a heroic ending for our brave Han Solo, the new heroes watch helplessly from a distance as they watch the old Rebel battle hero get killed with a light saber. Wasn’t this how Obi Wan died?

I’m sure there are more similarities if I wanted to take the time to delve into it, but my point is that the writing for this movie was weak. They took the same story lines from the old movies and put new actors in them, even old actors.

We finally get a glimpse of Skywalker at the end of the movie. He doesn’t speak a word in the entire movie.

Han Solo was without a doubt the best part of the movie. Harrison Ford I’m sure will be nominated for awards which he deserves recognition for. Now that he is gone, I don’t know how the other actors in the movie are going to have the strength to give the next movies what is needed. I’m sure the next movie will be all about Rey and Skywalker, but if they are relying on Mark Hamill to shoulder the acting load of a movie, maybe they should find a way to resurrect Harrison Ford because I don’t think Hamill is that good of an actor.

I’m sure I’ll watch the next movie, but my hopes for it being anything better than OK movie are not high.

In January, I made my monthly trip to Salt Lake City to visit Wendy, my girlfriend. She is a huge fan of Sundance Film Festival. Its an OK event for me, but she is a huge fan. I went last year, and the movies are weird. There’s no Matrix or Transformers or Batman type movies, you know, good guy movies that I like. So, I wasn’t expecting it to be too great, but I went because I enjoy seeing her happy. She knows I’m not all that artsy about this stuff, so she did her best to pick movies I might like. I think she did a pretty great job.

The first movie we saw was called Taking Chance (IMDB). It stars Kevin Bacon and the movie is being put out by HBO. I have to say, I never thought I would have enjoyed a movie at Sun Dance as much as I liked this one. Straight up I’ll admit, I cried like a baby during this movie. It is really moving. It is about a US Marine Corps Lt. Colonel who volunteers for what is known as escort duty. This is something I was not aware of that happens. Escort Duty is where the remains of our fallen warriors are returned to the family in the US with a member of that branch of the service who is of equal or greater rank. The movie is based on the true story of Lt.Col. Michael Strobl who escorted the remains of LCpl Chance Phelps from Dover, DE to his home in Dubois, WY. Chance was killed in Iraq April 9, 2004, serving his country.

I can not do justice for the way the movie presents the care, dignity, and respect that is shown for the remains of America’s fallen warriors, as they are returned home. The person assigned escort duty stays with the remains throughout the journey until the fallen has been returned home.

After the movie was over, the director, Kevin Bacon, Lt.Col Strobl, and a few others involved with the making of the movie were on stage to answer questions from the audience. Lt.Col Strobl appeared to be a very humble man.

I don’t care if you are pro war, anti war, Republican, Democrat, independent, or what ever your view on the world is. If you are a citizen who enjoys the freedoms of living in the United States, you should really see this movie. It makes you proud to be a part of this country and grateful for the sacrifice that so many have given so you can have freedoms.

When I first realized what the movie was about, I had a sinking feeling in my gut that this was going to be someone’s tirade of how bad the war in Iraq is and that we shouldn’t be over there. Absolutely nothing about that viewpoint was made. This movie was completely apolitical. The director, Ross Katz, did an excellent job of making an unbiased movie that portrays the honor our troops receive after they have made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

If you can’t see it on HBO, I’m sure it will be out on DVD some day, maybe even in theatres. Regardless, make an effort to see it.

When one falls, another brings him home

Saw this and thought it was funny. It’s Will Ferrell’s character Ricky Bobby from the movie Talladega Nights – The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (Unrated Widescreen Edition).

Here’s the deal I’m the best there is. Plain and simple. I wake up in the morning and I piss excellence.